Why I Am Pleased with Pinterest for Branding on Social Media
Managing expectations as “low-risk, high-reward” is key for consulting and training businesses.
Why would consulting-based businesses use a platform traditionally dominated by women and used predominately for shopping? Well, times are changing, and Pinterest continues to elevate its game. Pinterest is now an extremely viable branding tool for all types of businesses.
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest describes itself as the visual inspiration platform people worldwide use to shop for products personalized to their taste, find ideas to do offline, and discover the most inspiring creators. Their mission is to inspire everyone to create a life that they love.
According to Pinterest, more than 450 million people come to the platform every month to explore and experience billions of ideas that have been saved. The US-based publicly traded company has strong financial performance and approximately 4,000 employees worldwide.
Pinterest has historically had a predominantly female user base, and this trend continues today. As of 2021, around 60% of Pinterest users worldwide are female. Pinterest is most popular among younger age groups, with most users falling between the ages of 18 and 49.
My Businesses That Use Pinterest
Both my primary business and a not-for-profit business use Pinterest. In 2023, both entities moved from a sleepy Pinterest presence to a more aggressive one.
JD Solomon Inc
Branded as JD Solomon Solutions, this company is a management consulting firm that practices across the United States. Our niche services are program development, asset management, and facilitation for facilities, infrastructure, and the natural environment. Essentially, we pull together highly technical aspects where problems contain a lot of complexity and uncertainty. Our business is built on reputation and relationships.
Communicating with FINESSE
Communicating with FINESSE is a not-for-profit community of highly effective communicators and facilitators. Our goal is to teach and train the next generation of knowledge workers to be superior in using soft skills. CWF offers publications, webinars, and publications — both free and paid.
Why Use Pinterest for Branding Businesses
Demographics The business environment for both of my organizations is related to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). The dominant gender is male. The social media platform LinkedIn matches well with this core demographic. With its high percentage of females who are traditionally buying something, Pinterest fills a gap not covered by LinkedIn.
- Marketing
Pinterest emphasizes what your organization is selling. The platform allows us to re-direct back to our websites or Amazon. More important than providing the link, it reminds us as content creators and consultants that we need to be pushing our products and services.
2. Branding
Every organization produces a lot of visuals for its articles, videos, and various forms of social media. Re-using those visuals on Pinterest is easy. And since Pinterest places more emphasis on visuals than words, we tend to pay more attention to the branding associated with the visuals now that we are posting on Pinterest more aggressively.
3. Inspiration
Pinterest is a great place to find inspiration for what others are doing, which includes many different sectors. It is interesting within our organizations to see how three of us working on Pinterest (two men and one woman) find different inspirations.
4. Networking
I like some of the Pinterest networking we have cobbled together. The tough part is that Pinterest is not naturally wired for content-type consulting and training. As a team, we are hopeful that business networking will continue to grow in 2023.
Summary
Pinterest is now an extremely viable branding tool for all types of businesses. Our companies, JD Solomon, Inc and Communicating with FINESSE, have been pleased with the platform’s ability to cover a key demographic and provide us with new inspiration. Our key has been to make slow, steady progress and maintain realistic expectations.
JD Solomon Inc provides solutions for facilitation, asset management, and program development at the nexus of facilities, infrastructure, and the environment. Founded by JD Solomon, Communicating with FINESSE is the community of technical professionals dedicated to being highly effective communicators and facilitators. Learn more about our publications, webinars, and workshops. Join the community for free.
